Ford Considers Scrapping F-150 EV Truck (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0179988256
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/06/2358231/ford-considers-scrapping-f-150-ev-truck
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-considers-scrapping-f-150-ev-truck-wsj-reports-2025-11-06/
> Last month, a union official told Reuters that Ford was pausing production at the Dearborn, Michigan, plant that makes its F-150 Lightning electric pickup due to a fire at a supplier's aluminum factory. "We have good inventories of the F-150 Lightning and will bring Rouge Electric Vehicle Center back up at the right time, but don't have an exact date at this time," Ford said in a statement on Thursday.
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> The WSJ report added that General Motors executives have discussed discontinuing some electric trucks, citing people familiar with the matter. The Detroit three, which includes Ford, GM and Chrysler-parent Stellantis, have rolled back their ambitious plans for EVs in the United States, pivoting to their gasoline-powered models.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-150-lightning-ev-decision-89dc0d84?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqdci6OFPfEpaoFGiIzGEt6eMuCA6rcBEkSoeum5lj3EjgIGnFpM67pt&gaa_ts=690d38b9&gaa_sig=7OdFP1SuAtH4i3cORXVHKLevaKrsh3f12n49fEiQn54cswRguqXjKD-LNEH2xim7lFAayGRSIscBgV-ujXdvPg%3D%3D
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-considers-scrapping-f-150-ev-truck-wsj-reports-2025-11-06/
As you would do (Score:3)
...with any other low demand investment.
I think we may need to add EV to the recently published 3 bubbles.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure it's a about a bubble here. AI could be a bubble, because of the astronomical sunken cost and low adoption. EVs on the contrary have good sales forecast (though not increasing as fast as hoped for) in several key markets. That Ford can't sell their electric Canyonero is a specific problem related to the inadequateness of this offer with the customer profile and use case for such vehicle. The demise of the F-150 EV It does not challenge the ability of other manufacturers, in the US and in other
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> ...though not increasing as fast as hoped for
Hoped for by whom?
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Except for oil and ocal of course. Which continue to receive massive subsidies globally. Not to mention supply side control of oil
How Stupid (Score:2)
This is the problem with the modern finance system. Executives are going to jeopardize the longterm growth and health of their companies in order to have a couple of quarters that are slightly better than if they don't cancel their EVs.
It would be like doubling down on vacuum tubes after the introduction of the integrated circuit.
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What?
They lose money on every EV F-150 they sell.
To continue making them is non-sensical. What can Ford sell that generates enough PROFIT to at least offset the LOSSES of every F-150 EV?
They have a huge unsold inventory of $100K pickup trucks, why keep making more F-150 EVs just to park them in an airport parking lot somewhere?
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I mean, call me crazy, but they could only make as many as they can sell. Which isn't zero.
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Ok, you're crazy. :)
Not really, I guess, but you don't understand how things are manufactured at scale.
There's a minimum number of sales of a product that have to be made in order for the overall production line to be profitable. In some cases that minimum number can be made slightly smaller by increasing the per-unit price of the finished product, but there's also a limit to how much people will pay for something.
"Economy of scale" is a real thing, and some expenses are fixed whether you make lots or a fe
full-size electric pickup (Score:5, Insightful)
"full-size electric pickup"
That's your problem. And you even admit it.
"the arrival of a cheaper midsize EV truck undermine the business case"
MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT A "FULL-SIZED" FUCKING TRUCK. THEY'RE TOO GODDAMN BIG.
A friend of mine has one, and its been nice for a few very VERY niche things we've needed to haul, otherwise, the thing is a goddamn massive tank that is far too large to easily park in any tight parking lot. It is a total pain in the ass getting around town in the thing.
Back in my day, the F-150 was a small to mid-sized truck, not an overwhelming behemoth. Release a small sized and mid sized electric pickup. That's it. That's the business plan. YOU LITERALLY just admitted it. So just do it yourself !?
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So you deny that an F-150 today is significantly larger than one 10 years ago? You deny the objective fact that car manufacturers have chosen to build LARGER trucks because they are exempt from restrictions present on other vehicles? Got it. So you live in a world that is rose tinted where you think this has been entirely consumer driven.... Why then, are these behemoths not widespread outside the US and Canada?
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Lots of people want full-sized pickups, unfortunately. The F150 has been one of the top selling vehicles in north america for literal decades, and while it used to be smaller, it's been pretty big for at least 10 years.
But the Lightning is SUPER expensive and a lot of the folks buying full-sized trucks are doing it for the optics. They want to appear tough and rugged, and they can't do that without a loud engine, I guess?
The depreciation on EVs is also astronomical. Pay $100k for a Lightning and it'll be wo
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Quote>I agree that people SHOULD want smaller trucks, or—get this—CARS, but the big car companies love their margins. Ford's eliminated every passenger car in their lineup except for the Mustang (even the Mustang Mach-e is classified as an SUV for some reason).
People want smaller pickups, just look at the market for older small pickups... The issue is there is little profit in passenger cars, there is big profit in big pickups and SUVs. If you can make a quality, attractive economical passeng
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> I doubt rednecks, the main users of trucks, will buy an EV truck anyway.
No, the biggest users of trucks are commercial businesses. Look at a construction site. Most of the trucks are Ford F-150's .Unfortunately the EV variant just isn't the best option in a lot of cases. All of the aerodynamic tricks than make an EV get decent mileage kinda go out the window when you're driving something with all of the aerodynamics of a brick. Then there's all of the extra weight of tools, material, and equipment. Or worse yet, hauling a trailer.
Constructions sites generally don't have power
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Your class biases are showing.
The last point is valid though. The National Forest campground I went to had no electrical power at all. Also no cell phone reception. No FM radio either, but AM did work at night.
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That's how a campground SHOULD be. If you need all that shit, get a hotel room.
Re: full-size electric pickup (Score:2)
Every time they do, it ends up being way too big and with the worst engine.
Take the maverick for example. In the focus lineup the 2.3 turbo is the top and highest performance gas wasting engine.
Thats what they put in their lightweight truck. Where is the 1.0 at here with a manual transmission?
Gear ratios are horrible. The point is is that everything is done to make it not quite worth going to the small truck over just buying the bigger F150.
Yet, I can draw on the back of a napkin some numbers that would act
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> MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT A "FULL-SIZED" FUCKING TRUCK. THEY'RE TOO GODDAMN BIG.
Counterpoint: The Ford F series are the best selling vehicles in the US. Second place is the Chevy Silverado, which is another full size pickup. If you broke out just the F-150 I think it's just barely behind the Silverado (Looks like ~420K vs ~410K so far this year?)
The physical size isn't the problem. Smaller pickups like the Honda Santa Cruz and Ford Maverick do not sell well. The kinds of people who actually want a pickup
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The problem with midsize trucks is that they aren't actually much smaller than a full size truck now, except that for some inexplicable reason the box is about an inch too narrow to put a sheet of plywood in the back. Also these midsize trucks are nearly as expensive as the full size and, like you say, they don't get significantly better fuel efficiency than the full size truck. Given these facts it's no wonder North Americans prefer the full-size trucks.
As for the Lightning, it is a reasonably good fit f
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I read that the typical millionaire in the U.S. has an F150.
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> MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT A "FULL-SIZED" FUCKING TRUCK. THEY'RE TOO GODDAMN BIG.
Here in Canada full size pickups from Ford, GM, and Ram are the 1st, 3rd and 4th best selling vehicles. 2nd is Toyota RAV4. Only one car made the top ten.
[1]https://www.brockfordsales.com... [brockfordsales.com]
The suggestion by many here that people are somehow involuntarily coerced into buying these trucks is ludicrous. It is not a conspiracy. People buy them because they are nice and capable conveyances and they can afford them. Manufacturers make them because people like buying them.
More people need to spend more
[1] https://www.brockfordsales.com/news-article/Ford-F_150-2024-id4201.html
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The big three hardly make any cars anymore. It's all SUVs, crossovers, and trucks.
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> The big three hardly make any cars anymore.
Because nobody bought them when they did.
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It's really odd when people insist on arguing with reality and expecting to win. A single look at most sold cars for previous year worldwide tells you that Ford F-series is a massive seller:
[1]https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Double so considering that this is worldwide numbers, and F-series primarily sells in US.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-car-models-worldwide/
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The ICE F150 is a huge seller, we're talking about the $100K EV F150.
Ford makes obscene profits on ICE F150s, it suffers obscene losses on EV F150s.
See the difference.
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Your full caps lock line appears to have omitted the critical "EV" part and claims, and I quote:
> MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT A "FULL-SIZED" FUCKING TRUCK. THEY'RE TOO GODDAMN BIG.
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I quite like my Colorado. It's the correct size for what I need, and it can pull the camper as well.
And that brings up the point. People who have full size trucks (especially the diesels) tend to pull things. EVs are great at peak power, but now we are going to keep this up for three hours? What was the range of the electric F-150 pulling a decent load? Much less than advertised.
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> Back in my day, the F-150 was a small to mid-sized truck, not an overwhelming behemoth
My emotional support vehicle is a 26' boxtruck, you small-minded peasant.
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Speak for yourself, I love full sized pickup trucks.
Good! (Score:1)
"Commuter" cars are about the only thing EV's are good for. But a full size pickup truck? Pretty much anyone that wanted an EV has one. There are countless used EV's on the market because people didn't like the lack of range, the lack of battery power on cold/hot weather, the time it takes to recharge etc.
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> "Commuter" cars are about the only thing EV's are good for. But a full size pickup truck? Pretty much anyone that wanted an EV has one. There are countless used EV's on the market because people didn't like the lack of range, the lack of battery power on cold/hot weather, the time it takes to recharge etc.
See, it's that sentence there that gets trotted out from time to time that reveals bullshit-thinking. EV sales weren't stable. They were steadily rising until something happened.
What happened, you ask?
The President of the United States of America removed the incentives that put EVs on roughly the same footing as ICE vehicles, to the benefit of - get this - the subsidized oil industry. That's when growth of the EV market stalled. It would be a staggering coincidence if it just happened that the deman
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"Fossil-fuel firms receive US subsidies worth $31bn each year, study finds. Figure ... is likely a vast understatement"
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
And that doesn't count the literal trillions we've spend on the military in order to keep oil imports flowing.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-fuels-subisidies-study
Having trouble selling your 100K truck? (Score:2)
They needed a 20K Slate Truck (https://www.slate.auto/) and instead gave us something that costs as much as a condo. No, just no.
EV are superior (Score:2)
You can disable the noise generator and sneak up on the little ones, then gun the motor and deliver 300kW of bone crushing electrons.
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> noise generator
All EVs sound the same. You can't tell the difference between a Chevy Volt and a full sized pickup sneaking up on you. They should have allowed pickup EVs to emulate a Cummins 6.7L turbo diesel engine.
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We finally found the reason Cybertruck exists. It's to shatter the cars of the people that "want to casually crush children, grandparents, and midsize sedans underneath their wheels".
That's why it has that hilariously thick and hard steel body. Now it makes sense.
Range anxiety is legit. (Score:2)
One add a larger or additional fuel tank to any conventional truck, or plop a transfer tank with pump in the bed.
People buy trucks to serve their use case, not to serve anyone else's. Invent a form and fit gasser replacement and they'd sell, but paying for inferior performance is absurd.
Simple (Score:2)
They cost too damn much.
I own a Lightning.. (Score:2)
EXCELLENT first go from Ford at an electric pickup truck. Beat Musk to market and even taught him a lesson or two. The Lightning was supposed to be replaced in a few years anyway (T3) and most of us knew it as a science experiment. I applaud the engineering team who had impossible timelines, almost no budget and a seemingly impossible mandate to build an EV truck with as many off the shelf parts as possible. Does it have some short comings? Well, no more than it's ICE cousin- is it big? It's no bigger t
Ok... Actual truck owner's opinion.... (Score:2)
I own a Ford F-250, diesel, crew cab. My primary use is to tow my RV trailer, which weighs upwards of 12k lbs. (5600+ Kg). I use this RV roughly 7 weeks of the year, 4 weeks of which this year are actual business trips, and are fully tax deductible. Don't bother commenting on my needs or use case, there's a work reason. The truck has a 6.7L engine which produces 440hp (328Kw) & something around 975 ft/Lbs (~1300 nM?) of torque. When I'm not using the RV, It sits idle in my driveway at a ratio of so
Translation (Score:2)
Ford: we can't make money selling an EV Truck so we will use the old supply-chain excuse to make it look like we still want to keep making them but can't for reasons outside our control.
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I am not sure how any American manufacturer can be confident of their supply chain for EV's given the trade conflicts with China. And they sure as hell can't compete with China's auto industry in the world markets. They are going to go the way of US Steel trying to sustain a dying industry with legacy technology. They should be trying to bring in Chinese partners. But that ain't going to happen.
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US is a massive manufacturer of steel to this day.
It's specialty is recycled steel, which requires a specific technology set. Notably it's a common feature of developed nations that have already built up their main infrastructure to modern standards, because that leads to having a very large amount of recyclable steel you need to do something with as you renew your infrastructure over time.
PRC swallowed virgin steel production, which is common for nations building up infrastructure, and having very little r
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No, and hell no.
The big three more or less are the survivors of the Japanese and Korean "cheaper vehicle" imports.
The problem today is that China and pretty much undermine any country's economy by subsidizing their domestic production. Like go look at how many Chinese EV's are just fake-sold and then sit in lots, fields, or are abandoned with no mileage.
We should not be allowing China to dump stuff into North America, no matter what it is. But I also don't really give much of a care if "big three" keel over
Incrementalism (Score:2)
It's incrementalism, the US auto manufacturers long long term in effect business strategy has to be raising the cost and complexity and piling on extras into cars and trucks for the last 40 years with the 'hope' that the USA buyers will keep buying overpriced vehicles to keep up with the neighbors.
The odd thing is that the US has kept subsidizing the auto manufacturers, 2008 financial crisis and taking on GM's pension obligations for example, as insurance in case there is a need for a very large number of m
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> The big three more or less are the survivors of the Japanese and Korean "cheaper vehicle" imports.
Not really cheaper, just better. And two of those companies (GM and Chrysler) did not really survive. They went bankrupt and reorganized.
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> And that's before the uncertainty around rare Earth minerals which are absolutely critical to the battery in that EV.
Nit: To the best of my knowledge, there are no rare earth minerals in EV batteries. They are, however, used in a lot of EV *motors*. Lithium, cobalt, manganese, iron, etc. are anything but rare.
> Folks have not really fully grasped just how much of a fuck up electing Donald Trump was and is. I think the scale of the fuck up is a little bit too large for most people to comprehend. Trump has done as much damage in 10 months as a Republican president usually does in 8 years. We also did not get the usual 8 years of Democrats fixing the previous Republicans disastrous policies.
The full extent of the damage will take years to fully appreciate. That's half the reason people like him get elected. By the time the full extent of the damage is know, you're two presidential cycles later or even three.
> Given all the uncertainty and the loss of the 7500 tax credit yeah there is no way in hell anyone can sell EVS profitable unless they're using slave labor to build them like China does.
It's really not *that* bad. They just have to sell them for more money. The tax credit does
Re: (Score:2)
Elon Musk compensation package:
> The pay plan would give Musk 423,743,904 shares, awarded in 12 tranches of 35,311,992 shares each if Tesla achieves various operational goals and market value milestones. Goals include delivering 20 million vehicles, obtaining 10 million Full Self-Driving subscriptions, delivering 1 million “AI robots,” putting 1 million robotaxis in operation, and achieving a $400 billion adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization).
And:
> The plan has 12 market capitalization milestones topping out at $8.5 trillion. The value of Musk’s award is estimated to exceed $1 trillion if he hits all operational and market capitalization goals. Musk would increase his ownership stake to 24.8 percent of Tesla, or 28.8 percent if Tesla ends up winning an appeal in the court case that voided his 2018 pay plan.
So, Tesla has to generate $8.5 Trillion in revenue over the next ten years for Musk to get $1 Trillion in stock... If the company doesn't meet those targets, he doesn't get the stock.
The pay package isn't All or nothing (Score:2)
He is going to still walk away with hundreds of billions of dollars. Much more than Tesla will ever generate in profit.
Eventually that bad stock is going to have to be dumped somewhere. And you are no doubt planning on being able to dump it on to somebody else. Everybody is.
There aren't going to be enough suckers in the world for you to get out before the collapse. You better make sure you can afford to lose all that money. And don't forget your 401k will probably be heavily invested too so don't co
Re: The supply chain problems are real (Score:2)
Did you confuse market capitalization with sales revenue? What if sales are flat or down, but the stock keeps rising because of short squeezes and other purely financial tricks that are independent of real economy sales?
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> Meanwhile Tesla is about to give Elon Musk 1 trillion with a t dollars. It's not just more money than the company has ever made it's more money than the company ever can make. It took them 20 years and constant government subsidies to make 43 billion in profit. To pay Elon Musk will take 200 years.
You said a lot that was worthwhile, but you went of the rails here. Let me fix it for you:
Tesla is about to give Elon Musk the opportunity to gain 1T dollars . The deal is that if he increases MY TSLA holdings about 5x, he gets option grants roughly. Why would I not vote for getting $5M for every $1M I currently hold? Because I hate Elon Musk so much that I will say to hell with the $5M gain as long as he doesn't get another win? I guess there are people who think like that.
You make it sound lik
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The Norse national investment fund, owning 11% of Tesla stock, said no to Musk. Whether that is because they don't think he earned that trillion USD or that he can make Tesla enough to let Tesla give Musk that generous package, who cares. And they are not the only big Tesla investor, who say no to Musk.
Tesla has even trouble giving their cybertrucks to police forces (for tax purposes). Las Vegas police has a few, apparently.
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> Ford: we can't make money selling an EV Truck so we will use the old supply-chain excuse to make it look like we still want to keep making them but can't for reasons outside our control.
That may not be far from the truth. The last round of UAW strikes resulted in them having significant veto power against EVs at the big three manufacturers, namely in hampering the ability of them to grow the supply chain. Few democrats will acknowledge it, but UAW members by and large really hate EVs, even though the official stance of the union might say otherwise.